Electronic Warfare (EW) systems are typically embedded within an aircraft used to gather intelligence data and perform other missions. EW systems may include specialized hardware, Operational Flight Program (OFP) mission processor software running on the hardware and firmware controlled by the OFP. During missions, the EW system may be used offensively or defensively. For example, the data gathered by the EW system may be used for assessment of target emitters to determine whether to take countermeasures, such as jamming, against the emitters. EW techniques, in each of which the frequency, phase, and amplitude parameters of a waveform are defined as a function of time, may be used to produce the countermeasures. The EW techniques may be capable of having different parameters, parameter ranges and parameter order. The firmware EW techniques may be stored in a register mapping.
While the hardware in the EW system may be able to store a large number of EW techniques in practice, the firmware may be hardware limited to being able to store a limited number of register mappings used to produce a few EW techniques. Thus, to provide effective countermeasures, the firmware in the EW system may be updated from time to time. This may be particularly useful during long missions in which a large number of emitters and other targets on which to take countermeasures may change. When the firmware is reloaded with a new register mapping, however, the OFP is changed. Undesirably, changes to the OFP are expensive and time consuming.
It would thus be desirable to reload the firmware of the EW system without changing the OFP, while still permitting the OFP to operate the new firmware loading with the new register map.